[GTALUG] VM decisions for school laptop..

[Michael Galea]

On 04/12/18 15:58, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> | From: Michael Galea via talk <talk at gtalug.org>
> 
> | On 04/11/18 22:27, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> 
> | > Do you have a good example of why he would bother firing up Linux?
> |
> | I imagine he will want to run the Linux instance in the background so he can
> | get access to a personal git server.
> 
> I would *guess* that git could run natively under Windows.  Googling
> gets hits but I haven't read any of them.
> 
> If not, I'd expect that it could run on the Windows Subsystem for
> Linux.  That should incur less overhead (hardware resources and
> sysadmin resources) than a VM.
> 
> Are there other examples?
> 
> | The course he is taken is in game design and it is mixed Windows/Linux, so
> | what he actually uses the Linux for will be mandated by the school.
> 
> That changes things a lot.  The schools guidance should provide
> baseline requirements.
> 
> I'm impressed that the school even considers Linux relevant.  I wonder
> why.

Yeah, it wasn't the school.  When we visited the university fair to look 
into the program, we spoke to an enthusiastic second year student.  I 
asked her, somewhat hopefully, if they used Linux at all.  "Absolutely" 
she said, "It's what I mainly use on my laptop". She had debian 
installed.  My wife, deity bless her, turned to me and said "Isn't that 
what we use?"

> 
> For serious gaming, I imagine you need a notebook with a dedicated
> GPU.  Generally that's annoying to support under Linux.  Not an area I
> know much about.
> 
> Gaming notebooks have developed into a different breed.
> 
> | I myself would push him completely to Linux but for:
> | 1) Some game design systems have sole support or better support under Windows
> | (according to him),
> 
> Sure looks that way to me, from a distance.
> 
> | 2) Windows seems to be his preferred development target,
> | 3) He plays a lot (too many really) games on Windows.
> 
> Those two go hand-in-hand.
> 
> | > I now think that an ultrabook is better for students: easy to carry,
> | > long battery life.  256G of SSD and 8G of RAM is fine now, I think.  I
> | > love having a great screen.
> | >
> 
> | Good point, but I suspect that the laptop should be meaty enough to play the
> | things he develops on it.  He uses unity and recommendations for building a
> | dev machine range from 8-32 GB.
> 
> The ultrabook is probably not appropriate for what he needs to do.
> Using the minimum amount of memory might turn out to be a problem.
> On no basis, I'd recommend 16G (RAM is very expensive these days).
> 
> I'd aim for a notebook with some open memory slots that you can
> populate after purchase.  That gets tricky: you'd prefer that the
> slots each be occupied with high density cards so as to leave room for
> expansion without having to evict the original cards.
> 
> | 2) Make sure the processor support Intel's VT-x for 64 bit development.
> 
> I think that all modern chips that would be offered to you would have
> VT-X.  Perhaps VT-D would be useful too, but I don't know.
> 
> | 3) Consider an SSD.
> 
> I imagine that gaming notebooks would allow both to be installed.
> 
> These days, M.2 connector with NVMe is great for SSD.  Much faster
> than SATA.
> 
> And then you want a separate 2.5" bay for a SATA HDD.
> 
> 
> 
> Don't get me wrong.  Linux offers wide horizons.  Lots of amazing
> systems.  More than are available on Windows.
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-- 
Michael Galea